


High Heaven

by MrProphet



Category: McLevy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 23:12:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10707135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	High Heaven

Edinburgh in summer is a staggering sight, the sun standing over Arthur’s Seat, gleaming on the cobbles. My own parish of Leith is… rather less pretty. Leith in summer has only one thing to distinguish it: the smell. The great and the good – or as great and good as Leith produces, which means money more than quality – usually try to leave the city in the hotter months, leaving it to the ruffians and rogues.

I am James McLevy, Inspector of Police, and I also stay. Leith is my protectorate and I must guard it.

It was nine days after we lost Bludger Bones in the sewers that we found him again. Bones was a hired thug, ten a penny in Leith, but he had an edge over the competition; he was prepared to kill. That made him almost a pennyworth on his own, and the fact that he was careful enough not to get caught might have commanded a tanner a time. That caution kept him out of my hands for far too long, but finally it failed him.

We had him, until a young constable decided that catching a murderer with blood on his hands was less important than keeping his uniform trousers clean.

I can’t say I blame him. He didn’t know Bones like I did, and the sewer did smell foul. And I can’t deny that he made the right choice. After all, when we found Bones in the river three nights later, he was dead of a fever, and presumably he caught that in the sewer where he ran to hide among the other rats.

One less killer on the streets of Leith; I suppose that is a type of justice, but I can not be satisfied. Justice should not be natural, for nature is an unreasoning beast who would have claimed that young constable as willingly as a thug like Bludger Bones. Let nature have her whims; justice is for the law.


End file.
